Hokage By Necessity
by Evil Is A Relative Term
Summary: Hokage-it was Naruto's dream, just as Sasuke was his promise. And for a short, glorious time, he had them both. But when tragedy strikes, it is Sakura who must continue to bear the reality of the dream: endless paperwork, bickering Kage, and political factions.
1. What We Treasure

Disclaimer: As you might have observed, I actually don't have that much interest in owning _Naruto_-it would be called _Sakura _and all the bishies would live.

Hokage-it was Naruto's dream, just as Sasuke was his promise. And for a short, glorious time, he had them both. But when tragedy strikes, it is Sakura who must continue to bear the reality of the dream: endless paperwork, bickering Kage, and political factions.

Hokage By Necessity

-What We Treasure-

Sakura's alarm began blaring just after four a.m., the little slug's eye stalks waving frantically. Grumpily, her hand came down on its head, flicking off the alarm. The eye stalks stopped waving. For an instant, she drank in the silent stillness of the faint pre-dawn light filtering through her curtain. Then, with a huff, she heaved her body out of bed, shedding covers as she padded to her bathroom down the hall.

She started awake properly at the icy wash of water in the shower, quickly adjusting the temperature so that, while bearable, the water remained chill. Bracing her hands with her palms flat against the wall, her feet spread wide at the opposite end of the tiled cubicle, she stretched her body into a long curve, feeling the icy water pool into the channel of her spine, running down between her buttocks.

Leaning back further, she closed her eyes against the spray, holding her breath after inhaling deeply. She imagined carbon dioxide accumulating, her oxygen count depleting, then when she felt on the verge of suffocation, she dropped her head, cold hair sliding wetly over her breasts. Just as she had inhaled, she now exhaled, breathing out until she could feel the muscles in her chest compressing as she forced every bit of polluted air from her lungs.

She tried to memorize the sensation, the blissful, lightheaded emptiness of it all. But finally she could take no more and she allowed her abused lungs to resume their automatic function. Wasting no more time or water, Sakura made short work of the rest of her morning routine, brushing her teeth and drying her hair. She paused only for a moment to stare critically in the mirror, wondering if she should cut her already short hair even shorter.

But, banishing the thought for the next time she had her hair trimmed, she briskly pulled what there was of it into a clip at the back of her head. Naked, having abandoned her clothing in the laundry basket set outside the shower, she walked back to her room, pulling clothing for the day from the wardrobe.

Boyshort underwear and a matching sports bra that did little to enhance her lacking cleavage, both in a no-nonsense design, created the foundation. Before Tsunade-shishou had died, she used to joke that she had used up both her apprentice's luck in the breast department. Then a black skirt and a red sleeveless top that zipped up the front, hemmed in white. Fingerless black gloves that now went just above her elbow, having replaced the elbow guards and short gloves she'd used when a chunin. But her boots were of the same design, knee high with slight heels.

When she glanced at her clock, she found that there was still time for an orange before she left. Her apartment was silent and almost dark as she moved through it, but she didn't bother to turn on the lights. It wasn't as if she could get lost. There was only one more room that she had yet to visit that morning, and it was just ahead. The combination kitchen/dining/living room was small and lacked an actual kitchen, consisting mostly of a sink, hotplate, and microwave, which was why the rent was so low, but it suited her just fine. Sakura rarely had company and she never cooked if she could help it, which was why she subsisted almost entirely on a diet of takeout and fresh fruit in the summer.

Her dream of an orange was quickly crushed as she investigated her tiny refrigerator, but she made do with an apple.

She ate it on her way to the Hokage Tower, her eyes critically examining the stalls and stores, not yet open, as she passed through the commercial district. Two owners saw her as she passed and stopped her briefly, one to submit a complaint about a neighbor, the other to commission a genin team to help him unload a new shipment later today.

At twenty-three, her life was much the same as it had been at fifteen. She simply did the filing for a different Hokage.

In many ways, Naruto was a great, fantastic, shining example of a Hokage. Charismatic, kind, and capable of great enthusiasm for reform, the youngest ninja adored him, his agemates admired him, and the older shinobi respected him.

They had never had to do his paperwork.

A hidden village was nothing more and nothing less than a corporation. And, like all corporations, what kept it functioning was not lollipops and rainbows-it was paperwork. Reams of it. Forms to be filed, records to be kept, requisitions to be submitted, budgets to approve, promotions to be decided, resources to allocate, reports to be read...the list was potentially endless.

Naruto's interest in his position came to a screeching halt the moment it stopped looking like a job for Konoha's strongest ninja and more like something for the paper pushers. Sakura had realized with incredulity that even after years of observing Hokage in action and lusting after the position, Naruto had never realized what being Hokage actually did: it took you out of the field, put you behind a desk, and asked you to sign papers until you were certain your wrist would never be the same again.

The night guards nodded to her as she strode into the office of the Hokage, dropping the core of her apple into the Naruto's trashcan. Hands on hips, she frowned as she inventoried her battlefield. Naruto made it a point to spent as little time here as possible, which was fine, as he usually created more chaos than order as he tried to hurry through paperwork, but while Tsunade-shishou could usually be found in a bar when Sakura or Shizune had required her signature, Naruto was far more unpredictable, especially when she had forms she urgently needed him to sign.

Cracking the vertebrae in her neck, though it was a bad habit, Sakura set to work, sitting without compunction in the Hokage's chair as she efficiently began sorting through the stacks of paperwork that had trickled in after she had left last night. Naruto blindly attacked and was quickly overwhelmed, but Sakura had long ago developed a priority system.

At five, the guards outside the door were relieved and replaced. At six, the jounin and chunin who were on duty at the mission office arrived and the night duty shinobi handed over the requests for the day. At six-ten, Sakura received the missions and approved the ranks that had been assigned to them upon reception. Messengers had to be sent out if the ranking was changed, to inform the client of the changed charges and to confirm they still wished to have the mission executed.

Most of the shinobi who worked in the mission office were now familiar with her exacting standards and few changes were necessary. There were none this morning, so she handed them back to the chunin with a smile. She still remembered the terror of her own mislabeled missions as a genin. It was not an experience she would wish upon anyone else.

The shinobi of the mission office then copied out the missions summaries and record numbers into five color-coded scrolls, which would be used when assigning the missions to the shinobi. The original contracts were filed away and thus far had been maintained in perpetuity from the founding of the village, excepting the records that had been destroyed in their semi-regular disasters.

Sometimes they had to rush to meet deadline, but this morning the scrolls were delivered to Sakura promptly at six-fifty. She had time to glance over the missions once again, mentally assigning shinobi to missions before Naruto was due to arrive at seven. When he had not arrived by seven-ten, Sakura made her way to the mission office by herself. The chunin and jounin stood as she entered. Naruto would have put them at ease, but they regarded her with wary respect.

She was something of a legend here for verbal abuse, but at least she didn't break the furniture, as her master had made a habit of doing. At fifteen, she'd had more patience and more respect for her superiors. At twenty, she was their superior. And she had seen the price of too many poorly assigned missions to take this with anything less than the gravity it deserved. "The Hokage has not arrived yet," she announced, as if any of them could overlook the presence of their fearless leader. "We will begin with the D-rank missions today. The available squads?"

The mission office whirled into motion around her as files were pulled, specialties were compared, and jounin-sensei requests were considered. Some genin squads were able and willing to take on more than one mission. Some genin had requested individual D-ranks. Some contractors required that their mission be completed before or at a certain time. Some requested a particular team, others requested that the genin team they'd had last time not be reassigned to them. Those were investigated briefly, to make certain that the complaints had substance and whether they were actionable or not. Notes were made for genin teams that would require discipline.

D-rank assignment was inevitably a long and tedious task, which is why it was usually left until last or left mostly undone, because there was little risk to the genin involved. Not every team was Team Seven, able to discover life-threatening danger even when walking dogs.

But they begin with D-rank, in the hope that Naruto would arrive before they moved on to the more serious missions. When they finished the D-rank assignments, Sakura stepped out to send a messenger to locate the Hokage. Frowning, she returned to the office and they made quick progress through the C-rank and B-rank missions.

She dispatched several ambitious chunin and jounin who had come in early, but it was seven-fifty and they could delay no longer. The shinobi of the mission office awaited her decision. And it came easily. Because this was not the first time this had happened and it would not be the last. "Let's finish the A-class missions before the genin begin arriving. I'll take care of the S-class missions myself."

Naruto burst through the doors at eight-ten, just before the first group of genin. And he slipped easily into his role, laughing and joking with the gennin, teasing them about their assignment. Sakura barely looked up at them from her table to one side, but by the time the brief interview was over, she had the two S-class requests assigned to teams she was certain could handle them. Though not ANBU herself, her position as Naruto's aide afforded her above S-class clearance. Once the jounin herded his genin out the door, Sakura stood and subtly slipped Naruto the scroll.

He smiled brightly up at her. "Thanks, Sakura-chan! Guess some of Kakashi's habits are contagious after all."

Sakura rarely had the energy to scold him anymore. She saved it for people who actually listened to her criticism. That was also something age had taught her. So she only silently cuffed him lightly upside the head, retreating from the mission office. Now that the morning's assignments were finished, Naruto was more than able to hold his own. This was the part of the job that he enjoyed, after all. Not the weary work that made it possible. For all the growing up he had done he was still, at heart, Naruto-the same ninja who equated stealth with cheating and the same youth who had pursued the position of Hokage, not through a genuine desire to safeguard and serve, but for the recognition accorded to the office. His motivations were, naturally, not that simplistic in reality, but Sakura was often reminded of those shameless declarations, back when they were all unguarded children.

She took her lunch just after noon, once she had managed to discover that, yes, a desk did exist under all the paperwork. All that remained were proposals and correspondence that Naruto himself needed to look over. And she had carefully sorted through the former to remove any that would spark Naruto's imagination that the village didn't currently have the budget for. When she had first started doing so, she had felt faintly guilty, but time had eroded the guilt. Especially when she saw the disarray the office was reduced to when she returned from missions.

It was a perk of being the Hokage's aid, snatching up the choice missions, but Sakura underutilized it. She drew a salary and had precious few hobbies, so it wasn't as if she was pressed for money. Instead, she tended to choose missions she _knew_ she was ill-suited to, knowing herself almost depressingly well. She had never progressed in her training unless confronted with a direct threat to her continued health. And without Tsunade-shishou to guide her, the only place she could find that danger was outside the village.

Her actual lunch was brief and very pointedly did not include anything that even resembled ramen. Sakura, by this point, had a very, very low tolerance for ramen, which Naruto still insisted was the food of the kami. She, on the other hand, wouldn't shed a tear if the daimyo made the dish illegal in the Land of Fire.

As a creature of routine, she then drifted around the commercial district, now lively and crowded, before she made her way to the Academy. Naruto visited almost daily, but Sakura tried to make room in her schedule to appear at least once a week. Watching the children train was certainly far more relaxing than telling an ANBU squad that no, they couldn't use village funding to acquire whatever sharp-and-pointy-and-likely-to-explode instrument of death the weapons manufacturers were touting. Iruka smiled up at her as she entered his classroom. "Sakura! It must be Thursday."

"That predictable?" Sakura inquired dryly.

Iruka grinned. "Like clockwork."

-X-

Clockwork. It was good metaphor, Sakura admitted as she prepared to leave the office for the evening. Her life was delineated by routine. It was a routine she had observed first as Tsunade's apprentice, as her training schedule plugged the few empty slots in the older woman's schedule. When still a genin, she'd begun to learn the forms and systems that greased the wheels of Konoha's bureaucracy, as Tsunade-shishou had shamelessly used Shizune and her both. Then had been the required residency at the hospital, where everything, from the administration of medication to the hours for visitors, was contingent upon dutiful adherence to procedure.

Routines were comforting and comfortable, for though the paperwork never stopped, it was predictable.

But it was also empty. Cradling her hand in her hands, elbows on the great desk she'd stood before so many times, she struggled not to cry.

It had all seemed so simple when she was younger. When Sasuke returned, everything would magically fall into place and she would be happy. But happiness now seemed behind her, in the days of chasing down Tsunade-shishou in seedy bars with bartenders who chuckled at her difficulties and aided her search, of sneaking out of the village to gather information and feeling so proud of herself for doing so, in the days before she'd seen war.

Sasuke had returned. What an ugly process that had been. And for Naruto, the magic did happen. Their bonds went deep-but it was a bond from which Sakura was excluded. It had been surreal, feeling lonelier in the presence of her team than when they been scattered across the continent. She had retreated into the hospital and Tsunade's paperwork. And her teammates had allowed it.

She had made jounin before Tsunade passed away. It had not been, upon reflection, a particularly impressive performance. It had been solid enough to win her the title, but it made for a poor balm for her self-confidence as Naruto and Sasuke both rocketed through the ranks.

Upon Tsunade-shishou's death, Naruto had assumed the mantle of Hokage, fulfilling his lifelong dream. And, once the tears were finished, all that had changed in Sakura's life was whose name she now had to forge on official documents.

She glanced up as she heard footsteps beyond the door. Composing herself, she heard Shizune's familiar voice through the door. "Sakura? Are you still there?"

"Yes," Sakura replied, standing.

The doors opened and her senpai entered, looking just as harried as she ever had under Tsunade. As senior apprentice, while Sakura had stayed on as Naruto's aide, Shizune had assumed control of Konoha's medical system. She had done so with ease. She had been with Tsunade-shishou for almost as long as Sakura had been in training to be a ninja, after all. Sakura was still called in upon occasion to consult, mostly about poisons as she officially headed Konoha's Office of Strategic Surprise, or to assist in a particularly difficult procedure, but she no longer put in the long hours she had as a chunin.

Shizune smiled at Sakura. "Still fighting the good fight?" she teased.

"It never ends," Sakura responded warmly. "Did you need something, Shizune? Or just here for a visit?"

Shizune smiled. "It's Thursday. I thought I'd come over in case it's a thirsty Thursday."

Sakura laughed, moving from behind the desk. "You know, I'm beginning to suspect that if I deviated from my schedule, there would be people panicking."

That made Shizune chuckle. "It's not quite to that point yet. You were planning on going out?"

Sakura nodded, crossing her arms across her chest as she semi-reclined against the Hokage's desk.

No one made much fuss about it anymore, ever since she'd more or less been devoured by deskwork and Sasuke had entered ANBU, but once upon a time they'd been called the "Second Coming of the Sannin."

Naruto had thought it was the coolest thing since the invention of ramen, but Sakura had been less impressed. Because not all the connotations of that title were pleasant ones.

Sakura had struggled when Sasuke returned. It had not been the rosy, heart-wrenching scene of friendship and reconciliation that she had imagined. It was much more cold-blooded. It involved a great many ugly promises. And it had broken Tsunade-shishou's heart.

Sakura had resented Sasuke for that. Resented him for all the pain and suffering he didn't regret inflicting. But Sasuke was a "valuable resource." He could not be alienated. When Sakura voiced her unhappiness, Tsunade had looked ever more tired. And that broke Sakura's heart, for Tsunade-shishou had given her everything she was proud of.

Sakura couldn't remember the point when the occasional drink, supervised by Tsunade-shishou, had developed into a full-blown habit. "Functioning alcoholic" was the technical term. But when Tsunade died, she became less "functional."

It was Shizune who had saved her from that, just as she had saved Tsunade so long ago.

Neither of them pretended it was a miracle cure. They were both medics. They did not need to delude each other, for both of them knew, in exacting detail, exactly what addiction was. It was not something purely physical. Sakura was a medic of almost unprecedented control. She was capable of increasing or decreasing her alcohol absorption, could with a thought break it down into harmless protein components. In part, she did it for the same reason Shikamaru smoked. It was her memorial, in tiny ceramic dishes stacked into tall pyramids, of her beloved Hokage.

But it was also her excuse for violence.

Sakura hadn't suddenly stopped drinking, when Shizune had begun to intervene. For a time, she'd just tried to take her drinking outside Konoha.

It had worked, until she beat a civilian almost to death for something she couldn't even remember.

Warm sake made her a weeping drunk, because it made her recall Tsunade-shishou. But anything else only erased her inhibitions. And as it turned out, her inhibitions were the only thing keeping her fellow drinkers safe from a hair-trigger temper. When sober, Sakura could smile and nod through an hour interview with the Council. But there was no kind way to describe her behavior when intoxicated except to say that Sakura was a _mean _drunk.

She bypassed obnoxious and loud behavior to delve straight into bar fights. Fights _she _often provoked. And enjoyed too much for anyone's peace of mind.

That incident with the civilian had been the one Shizune could not hide from Naruto, so Sakura had dutifully served out her probationary period, which hadn't looked a great deal different from her sober lifestyle.

Sakura supposed that Naruto thought that had "cured" her, for the bar fights stopped.

The drinking had not.

The fights had not.

She simply made certain that all brawling occurred on a training ground, where she could do as she pleased without legal repercussions. It was generally achieved by Shizune reluctantly acting as her spotter if she was too drunk to shift the battle elsewhere, but for the past several months Sakura had managed well enough on her own.

"Where did you want to go?" she asked Shizune, who actually cared about things like ambience and who might be among the crowd.

Shizune paused thoughtfully. "The Long Winter?" she suggested.

Sakura shrugged. As she pushed herself away from the desk, Shizune moved to fall into step beside her. It was with a comfortable, companionable silence that they made their way to the bar in question. Neither bothered to change or freshen up. Tenten frequented classier bars, the kind where atmosphere wasn't a euphemism for a quasi-legal haze and half the bar singing along to every song they recognized and getting a quarter of the words wrong. Hinata, though she had improved immensely in her social forwardness since their Academy days, remained characteristically disinterested in barhopping and Ino had become a sad and striking example of maturity of late. Though Asuma had left his daughter's training in Shikamaru's hands, it sometimes seemed as if Ino was determined that his team should raise her with the same care and dedication that her father had shown to them. And as little Ai was eight and intensely interested in everything that her three mentors did, they were all trying very hard to be good examples.

The Long Winter certainly wasn't a place a child should ever see, let alone enter. Just a block over from the red light district, it was patched and scarred from numberless brawls and it stunk like their signature "Will of Fire" drink, which featured cinnamon liqueur and an alcohol content high enough to induce certain alcohol poisoning if you didn't vary your evening. Of course, if you managed to down three without vomiting or passing out, the house would pick up the tab.

So far as Sakura knew, only Tsunade had ever actually won the challenge.

As Sakura slid into "her" spot at the bar, the bartender, a rough-looking woman in her forties, raised a brow in silent inquiry.

"Momushu," Sakura told her, then smiled as the brow rose even higher. "I'm starting slow."

The woman, who Sakura only knew as 'Mama,' snorted. "Right, girly drink coming up."

"Sasuke comes back from his mission tomorrow," Sakura muttered bitterly, accepting the drink when it was shoved toward her with almost enough violence to slosh it out of the glass. _Someone will bleed tonight. _

Shizune shot her a worried look, but Sakura swiveled around on her barstool, scoping the crowd for likely targets. A few targets returned the favor, as she wasn't the only shinobi with bad habits. In their line of work, a person must be at best be ambivalent about violence, at worst more than a little in love with it. No one _stayed_ a shinobi who despised violence. They retired or died.

Sakura had been working towards the later before Sasuke's betrayal, but it had been a decade since the incident. She had grown and evolved-or devolved, depending upon your moral standpoint.

Her drink was almost too sweet and she grimaced at the taste of it. But as a man she could only vaguely recall navigated the crowd, wearing the distinctive flak jacket of a jounin, her lips tipped upward. And when he returned the lazy salute of her drink, her body almost vibrated with the joy of it.


	2. How We Measure

Disclaimer: Copyright to the appropriate parties.

Hokage By Necessity

-Chapter Two-

How We Measure

The little slug's eyestalks waved frantically, the alarm shrill and insistent inside her skull. With a deliberate, sluggish movement, Sakura blindly flicked off the switch and her room went silent. She lay prone on her belly for a moment, tormenting herself with the idea of sleeping in, but then stretched until even the joints in her wrists popped. With an inarticulate sound between a whine and a grumble, she got out of bed, nearly tripping on her tangled covers.

Ninja dexterity served her even before dawn, however, so Sakura made it safely down the hall to the bathroom, only to discover that her hair was still damp and her clothes from yesterday were soaking in the sink. Numb to the fact she'd gone to bed without pajamas, she fished her top out of the cold water. A note posted on the mirror caught her eye as she did so.

_Do your own laundry! _Shizune's handwriting scolded her. Shizune had seen her home, then, and likely bullied her into taking a shower. Post-illusion of immortality Sakura, riding on the dregs of adrenaline from a fight, rarely took into consideration the state of her clothing or the fact all the blood on _her _would certainly smear across her sheets by morning.

The residual warmth of Shizune's care make the edges of her lips quirk ever so slightly, but a long day stretched before her. Though the village accepted missions throughout the week, most of their requests came from the civilian sector, which meant that the biggest influx of tasks, especially the D-ranks, was on Friday as they rushed to finalize the week and place requests before the half-day on Saturday and Sunday, when most of their businesses would be closed.

A chilly shower quickly cleared and focused her mind, the clockwork existence of her life asserting itself. Any reasonable goal, no matter how forbidding it seemed on the approach, could be completed if broken into manageable steps. And though Sakura was aware that her life had become nothing more than the empty drudgery of completing those steps, the work itself no longer meaningful to her, the fact remained that the village depended on it. If she didn't concentrate on wading through the present paperwork quagmire, in her imagination her life stretched before her, broken down into the endless cycle of her inbox and outbox.

Her brief assay into her refrigerator revealed only a bit of odd fuzz in the back from where a fruit had gone overripe, so Sakura went without, counting on her caloric intake from the night before to see her through to lunch.

Though several store owners stopped her on her way into the Tower, Sakura managed to arrive before the night-shift guards left and sift through the more urgent things, outright rejecting an S-class mission that the mission office had forwarded directly to the Hokage's desk for her consideration. S-class missions were tricky things, for while they brought in almost obscene rewards, with every mission she risked some of her most talented shinobi, which wasn't something Konoha could afford for any amount of money after the war.

_Not her shinobi, _Sakura reminded herself, _Naruto's shinobi. _But generally it was Sakura who handled the missions after the mission office made the initial assessment in the client interview, who checked the requirements of the mission against active jounin and ANBU, and it was her hand that wrote down their names and signed off on the missions. And if they died, it was she who had sent them to their deaths. The guilt of that would dog her for weeks and months as she analyzed where she'd failed them.

But that was the price of power in a ninja village. It was why she could not quit, could not falter. Naruto saw only so much ink and paper heaped upon his desk, but she saw lives waiting there.

In a way, she was glad to have spared Naruto the accountability. They'd lost very few shinobi to missions in the time he'd been Hokage, but he'd flinched at each death. Grown timid afterward, until something or someone reminded him that they were shinobi and that they did not live in some idealized utopia in which fights ended when an opponent was defeated. Death, in many ways, was an expected outcome of their profession. There was even a standard rate of compensation paid to the family of the deceased.

At six, she heard soft noises outside her door as the shift changed. A knock came at the door. "Enter," Sakura said without looking up.

The door opened and Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo spilled into the room. "G'morning, Sakura," Kotetsu greeted her with a yawn.

"Good morning, Sakura," Izumo echoed a moment later.

The career chunin had once served as Tsunade-sama's aides, though Kotetsu had wryly referred to it as being her "errand boys." With the change in Kage, they had remained, for Naruto hadn't had assistants of his own, excepting Sakura, to replace them.

"Making the magic happen," Kotetsu grumbled, stretching. "Too bad it can't happen in daylight."

Izumo grinned. "You're just upset that Sakura's memorized all your hiding places and you can't slack off anymore."

Kotetsu snorted and didn't deny the accusation. "So, where are we this morning?" he asked Sakura.

"The Academy's extension for submitting next term's budget ends today," Sakura said. "They should be in their offices by seven. And tell ANBU Team Three that I want a written report explaining their requisition for their last mission. The village will only provide _basic _supplies, _within reasonable limits_. I want to know who approved something so ridiculous and flashy."

Izumo rolled his eyes. "They probably approached Naruto directly."

Sakura frowned, then sighed.

Kotetsu said, "That's our favorite Hokage. We should make him a mascot and ban him from managing his budget."

"Can't," Izumo replied, "That would make Sakura's life too easy. Our lives, too."

Kotetsu chuckled. "Yeah. Anything else, Meijin?"

Sakura glared up at him, but he only grinned more widely and held his hands up as if to ward off assault.

"Just reconcile yourself to the nickname," Izumo advised, moving closer to the desk and beginning to process an unstable stack of unsorted files. "At least it's flattering. Like the Third's 'Hakase' or Tsunade-sama's 'Hime-sama'."

Kotetsu nodded. "I _could _call you a slave driver, but that's a little harder to make into a nickname. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue."

Sakura pointed her pen threateningly at him, then pointedly stabbed it toward another stack of files. "Those need to filed."

"Yes, yes," he said, ambling toward them. Flipping them open, he glanced through a few of them. "These were the jounin who volunteered to be sensei?"

Sakura glanced up at Kotetsu sternly. "File."

"Oh, come on, Meijin. What's the fun of working for you if we don't even get access to all the interesting information first?"

"If you want to know who was approved and assigned gennin, why didn't you sit in on the Academy advisory meeting?"

Kotetsu grimaced. "Are you serious? It's a day long negotiation with a bunch of shinobi who haven't entered the field in years."

"I know. I was there," Sakura said dryly. Though Kotetsu made it sound near intolerable, gennin team selection was actually one of the brightest points of her year. Naruto was enthusiastic about it and talented as well, able to balance personality and ability with an ease that escaped her. He always laughed when she complimented him and said that he'd been watching them all along, that with practice it was easy to see beneath the childhood rivalries and insecurities to the _possibility _that waited inside each of them.

Gennin team selection reminded her of what had made Tsunade-sama select Naruto as her successor. He was kind, generous, and warm-hearted almost to a fault. Naruto was also charismatic and immensely strong, both physically and mentally. All his intentions were good, which was more than she could say for her own. But reality meant those things alone weren't enough.

As Kotetsu had pointed out, Naruto acted as if he'd never budgeted in his whole life and the very act of being entrusted with such an enormous operating budget seemed to overwhelm him. His impulsiveness hadn't yet been tempered by age and experience and his bookkeeping was dismal. Sakura had realized long ago that he placed instinct over knowledge, but she hadn't realized how appalling that dependence was until she'd thought someone was embezzling money only to discover that Naruto was approving requests without logging them and the shopkeepers were collecting their due, so it appeared as if the village ought to have more money than it actually had.

She suspected his past had a great deal to do with it. Normally, he would have lived in one of the orphanages until he came of age, but special dispensation had been given to allow him to live on his own. Given what and who he was, his supervision had been lax, so there had been no one to scold him for spending his food allowance on ramen and too much milk that would spoil before he could drink it all. When they'd gone to festivals, Naruto had eagerly emptied his savings into the cash boxes of the food venders. As he'd grown older, his talent in the field had become unmatched, so he'd been able to take lucrative missions and not worry much about his spending.

"Sakura-sama," a muffled voice called through the door, "the missions are ready for you."

Their morning proceeded smoothly from that point, though Kotetsu grumbled about petitioning for a radio. When it neared seven, Izumo excused himself to retrieve the Academy budget and Kotetsu disappeared, most likely for breakfast since it wasn't his habit to eat before coming in to the office. Sakura waited in the silence for Naruto, considering grimly a file that was both sensitive and unusual.

Rape accusations had been made against one of their chunnin who'd been on a solo escort mission. It happened, of course. Sometimes clients offered sexual favors in exchange for discounts, but otherwise shinobi committed sexual transgressions for the same reason the general population did. It wasn't about sex at all. It was always about power.

But Konohagakure's shinobi had a very good reputation for not making advances on their clients, which was why many ranking members of the government entrusted their daughters to them rather than a village with a more dubious reputation. It was for the protection of that reputation that Konoha had a zero-tolerance policy for unprofessional conduct toward clients.

_It'll have to be handled discreetly, _Sakura thought with resignation. _If the claims are unfounded, there's no need to ruin someone's career, but at the same time, we have act with haste so that the client feels their concerns are being handled with care. What an incredible headache. _She knew it was callous, to reduce a crime like that to an irritation for herself, but she knew neither of these people personally and unlike Naruto, she didn't have the emotion to spare to care for every person she encountered.

Konohagakure was a large urban center where military rule prevailed, which meant the Hokage was the putative ruler of the civilian population as well the shinobi one, though the city council generally oversaw day to day management of the businesses, shops, and the like and the chōnaikai, the neighborhood associations, saw to local enforcement of laws. But it was huge, massively complex organism, where competing interests constantly vied for funding and attention. It was impossible, even with eidetic memory, to recall every single person that lived within their walls.

But Naruto tried, weaving their lives, the same ones she saw reduced to figures and percentages, into vivid stories that remained with him and made the citizens feel special, appreciated when he greeted them.

Glancing at the clock, she found it ten minutes past seven, so she headed out to the mission office alone. She only grew worried when all the missions had been assigned and she took her leave without even a message from Naruto. _Sasuke's back, _she reminded herself, having seen his name on the register before Izumo had filed it. _But surely Naruto wouldn't have been that irresponsible? He's supposed to discuss graduation ceremony arrangements with the Academy today. He's always on time for those meetings. _

"Usagi-kun," Sakura said without pausing in her stride, "Locate the Hokage."

"Yes," was the answer, almost snatched away by the ANBU's swift response to her request. _If the day duty ANBU was shadowing me, Naruto hasn't entered the Tower or given instructions this morning. _

She knew where Naruto was likely squandering his valuable time at, but she'd never voluntarily enter the Uchiha district again, unless it was to raze it to the ground.

Sakura's remaining tender feelings had been crushed beneath her heel long ago. For a person so much had been sacrificed for to act as if it was his _right_, as if he _deserved _something from all of them, was infuriating to her. Especially when she had tried to meet those demands and been rebuffed just as coldly as when they were genin. It had gone beyond the level of _a woman scorned _to _a friend alienated. _

It had been like that photo that had been taken of them when they were genin, where Kakashi had stood behind Naruto and Sasuke, while she lingered slightly off to the side.

Sakura whiled away a few moments at a food stall, eating takiyaki fin-first, making a mental note to either go grocery shopping herself or send someone with a list. _Draft a grocery list and assign it to some poor genin squad, _she decided quickly. _I don't get enough time to train as it is. _

"Sakura-sama."

She didn't start at the voice, though she hadn't sensed the return of the ANBU. Being within the village and buried in paperwork dulled her abilities, whether the sense in question was sight, hearing, or chakra-related.

"The Hokage is within the Uchiha district."

_And to grant Sasuke privacy and as a gesture of trust, Naruto forbid ANBU from entering the district without express permission. Which he can't give from inside the district. _

"Thank you, Usagi-kun."

Sakura stared down at her hand, which still held the takiyaki wrapper. Crushing it in her fist with a slow deliberation, she imagined doing the same to that hateful district. There was nothing those houses were built of that could withstand the force she was capable of channeling into these fragile hands, no stone nor steel that couldn't be broken. Everything gave way beneath them-but only if she could lay hold of it. That was the essential weakness of her style.

And many days, it felt as if it was the weakness of her life. Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi-all of them were too swift to be caught.

"What time is it?" she asked a passerby blankly.

"Almost eleven," was the answer, rushed but delivered with a smile.

_I need to look over the budget before the meeting with the Academy directors. I should go back to the office. _Without looking up at the sky, which was filled with the splendor of summer, nor at the people who brushed past her, laughing and filled with vitality, Sakura ascended to the office of the Hokage, light filtering in from the windows to illuminate a desk now clear of unsorted paperwork. The office was empty, Izumo and Kotetsu absent.

This was Sakura's place, now, the one where she belonged. Not among the people like Naruto or in the field like Kakashi. Tsunade-shishou had made this office a place of _belonging_, as if this was where the family that she loved dearly lived, a family that loved her in return. Warm, boisterous, undefeatable Tsunade-sama, who'd been too strong to bear all her burdens with a smile. She'd raged, she'd cried, but always, she'd stood up and staggered onward, because even when running away, she lived life with a kind of joyful selfishness that Sakura couldn't hope to aspire to.

If Tsunade was the sun that had burned and blazed, Shizune was the sky, wide and calm enough to embrace it all, kind enough even to house the moon, pale and dead reflection though it was. Shizune was in some ways the most perfect kunoichi Sakura had ever met: as neat, modest, and soft-spoken as any housewife, but capable and flexible in battle, master of all Tsunade-sama's healing techniques.

They were both absent from this office now. And it was times like this Sakura felt their absence most clearly.

She took a step toward the great desk, then hesitated, a chill running across her scalp. At that moment, a bird flung itself imperiously at the window, landing with a heavy thump on the bar installed outside for that purpose. With a screech, it demanded attention.

Her eyes narrowed. _That bird-the edges of its wings have been dyed red. What is one of Sasuke's hawks doing here? _

The bird eyed her as she plucked the scroll from the container on its back, nearly smacking her in the face with a wing as it ascended in a flurry.

Thinking spiteful things, she unfurled the missive. Naruto's handwriting was sloppy and rushed, but his message was short. _Come quick. There's something wrong with Sasuke. _

For a long moment, Sakura was suspended in time, caught between action and inaction. And then she was bolting through the opened window, plunging toward the ground. 

A/N: About the nickname Meijin: It's a title used in both shogi and go and translated literally, it simply means 'excellent person' in the sense of excelling in a certain field. I didn't feel like rewatching or rereading Naruto to find out if the word they translated as Professor was Hakase or not, but as that's the title used when addressing college faculty, I think it's correct.

And, as you can tell, this isn't going to be a Dicken's novel-no unending bleakness. Besides, it'd be odd if she didn't have coworkers of some sort. A village the size of Konohagakure would require serious bureaucracy and infrastructure.


	3. Lives Without Leisure

Disclaimer: Still do not own.

A/N: For all that Sakura being a medic-nin is supposed to be a big deal, I don't think I've ever really read a sort of medical thriller take on her chosen path.

Hokage By Necessity

-Chapter Three-

Lives Without Leisure

_ I hate this part of me, _Sakura thought as she landed easily in a crouch, springing onto a nearby rooftop. _This part that crumples in the face of Naruto or Sasuke. Every resolution I make, I cannot keep. Not to stop Sasuke. Not to kill Sasuke. Maybe not even to stop loving him. I hate him too much to have let go of my feelings entirely. _

_ I have the authority to send anyone short of Shizune herself, but Naruto asks and I abandon all obligation. Recklessly. Thoroughly. Is it guilt? Friendship? _

_ Why am I like this? _

_ Why am I-? _The Uchiha district stretched beneath her feet, as empty and abandoned as it had been for over a decade.

"Oi!" she shouted to the silent streets. "Naruto!"

"Over here, Sakura!" came the muted reply.

The house she entered was strange to her, but any perusal of it was out of the question, as Naruto was busily tugging at her elbow before she'd even crossed the threshold. "This way, Sakura-chan," he told her urgently. "Sasuke-there's something wrong with him. He has a fever and he can't catch his breath."

Sakura paused, Naruto tugging on her arm to no avail. "Naruto, broken bones and gaping wounds are the limit of field healing. Even if it's a poison, I need a lab. Why didn't you take him to the hospital?"

"He said he didn't want to go."

"Aho," Sakura said coldly, shrugging off his hands. "Where is he?"

Naruto led her to a bedroom, where Sasuke was laid out on a bed atop the covers, staring angrily at the ceiling. That irritation was turned on her when he became aware of her in the room. "You..."

"You," she retorted cuttingly. "Boke. Manuke. Bakayarō." Sakura strode over to the bed and pressed her ear against his chest. Even without the aid of a stethoscope, she could hear a distinctive sound from his lungs and the way even the subtle pressure she exerted on his sternum interrupted his breathing. "Hospital. Now."

"But-" Naruto began to protest.

"No," Sakura said. "At this point, Sasuke's opinion doesn't count. I can't treat this here. It sounds like a lower respiratory tract infection, though only a real baka would let it progress this far without checking himself into a hospital. I'll blame your miserable attitude this time on your oxygen saturation level. One of the characteristic symptoms of hypoxia is irritability. Naruto ought to have thought something was wrong when you were being a bigger bastard than usual." Sakura dug in her field kit for a mask and unapologetically strapped it over Sasuke's face. "Sharing isn't caring," she quipped, tossing the ends of his comforter over him and gathering him into her arms. When he only struggled feebly, her first diagnosis, that he should have been in a hospital long before this, was reinforced.

"Naruto," she snapped, "don't even think of escaping. You'll give a full report of his symptoms to his attending physician."

That was what she said. She expected that she'd take him to the hospital, where they'd put him on an aggressive antibiotic regimen to cure an unseasonable case of influenza that had developed into a lower rather than an upper respiratory infection.

But nine and a half hours later, Sakura was staring at a chart that was somewhere beyond perplexing and was edging quickly toward alarming. She was sitting on the edge of Shizune's desk, the kunoichi herself looking over another copy.

"His oxygen saturation keeps dropping. If it doesn't level out, in a few hours, we'll have to classify it as acute respiratory disorder syndrome. He's not responding to antibiotics at all."

"Any of them?" Sakura asked, biting at the edge of her thumb in frustration.

"None. We were hoping just to stop him from deteriorating, but even increasing the doses to just short of toxicity didn't help, nor did broadening the scope. We even briefly made an attempt with the tetracyclines and macrolides, in case it was chlamydial pneumonia. But the onset is too fast and whatever he's got is unresponsive. Samples have been sent downstairs to the lab, but it takes time. If it gets worse, I'll have to ask you to purge the fluid from his lungs. "

"I know," Sakura said curtly. "But _what _is it? According to Naruto, Sasuke wasn't feeling well when he returned at approximately twenty three hundred hours last night, but he only felt slightly feverish with mild body aches. That's a cold or the onset of influenza. But he was sluggish the next morning. By ten, he was too tired to get out of bed. All in less than forty-eight hours from the first appearance of symptoms. Is it a parasite? A virus? Some designer poison?"

A rushed knock came at the door and a nurse opened the door without waiting for permission to enter. "Shizune-sama, Sakura-sama, you're needed immediately in ward 8B."

"What is it?" Shizune asked, rising from her desk.

"Hokage-sama's been admitted with the same symptoms as Uchiha-san."

Sakura and Shizune shared a look of mutual dread. "Less than twelve hours after exposure," Shizune murmured. "If it proves contagious as well as virulent-"

She didn't have to finish her sentence.

"There's no guarantee it's not a poison," Sakura said. "If it's a contact poison, something absorbed through the skin, Naruto could have handled the poisoned object as well."

"We can only hope."

Hope, however, was the currency of fools. By the next day, Sasuke was breathing only through the assistance of an oxygen mask and Naruto was nearing the same point, too sluggish to even sit up. One of the nurses who'd been assigned to Sasuke had developed a slight fever and the lab downstairs had ruled out poison. And the chunin who'd looked over Sasuke's papers and allowed him entrance into the village, who had simply happened to be present when Sasuke'd took a coughing fit, had just been hospitalized.

"Call a staff meeting," Sakura told Shizune. "Do it quickly and do it quietly."

Fifteen minutes later saw a small conference room packed with the most senior medic-nins and hospital administrators. Shizune had briefly covered their knowledge of the unknown pathogen, so they were all looking to them expectantly. Sakura did not keep them waiting.

"Ward 8 will become an isolation ward. Ask for volunteers to treat the patients there-we can't afford to expose the entire staff. They'll have their meals brought to ward 7, which will be converted to a dormitory. We'll also raise the quarantine wards. The hospital won't be accepting routine or emergency patients, so we'll send a notice to the medic-nin who've been off for the past few days or away on missions to report to the North Ward hospital. This floor will be cleared and negative airflow barriers erected so that this disease can't take advantage of the compromised immune systems of our patients here. Within seventy-eight hours, anyone not symptomatic will be discharged, though placed under surveillance and house confinement for the time being, as we haven't enough cases to determine if there is an asymptomatic contagious period. The patients won't be happy, but all of you are aware of how quickly this disease devastates the body. ANBU team 4 will be in charge of overseeing them, as well as quarantining anyone who might have been exposed to Uchiha Sasuke."

_As well, _she thought darkly, _as tracing his path on his last mission. If it's something localized that he's brought out of obscurity, there might be information on treating it. But the problem will be compounded if he was carrying out a mission in a country we don't have authority to act in. Our truce with Iwa fell through when Sasuke was reinstated and there hasn't been any communication since the new Kage assumed control. And Iwa isn't the only one. Naruto's friendship with Killer Bee was the saving grace of our relationship with Kumo. No Kage can afford the existence of someone who would walk into a conference of Kage in broad daylight with the intention of assassinating one of them, who was then publicly welcomed and favored by Naruto. _

Her internal thoughts muted the protests of the medic-nin, who advised caution and less stifling measures, which would be much resented.

"Silence," she ordered coldly at last, when the room had filled to overflowing with their opinions. "Since the Hokage is not present, I outrank all of you in this room and Shizune-who is the _only _person who has a right to naysay such things-has agreed to my countermeasures. You _will _do as ordered." She laid her hand gently on the table, then flexed her fingers, long stress fractures racing along the wood. "Am I understood?"

With ill grace and much offended pride, they complied with her orders, filing from the room.

"Well, that probably went as well as expected," Shizune said with a sigh.

"Better that they're angry with me than with you," Sakura murmured, pillowed her head on her arms, fingers idly tracing the cracks she'd left in the table. They were shallow, nothing more than surface damage that could be repaired easily enough. "I'll give them five minutes, then I'll check the barriers."

"Then I'll oversee moving the patients and get a list of the staff that'll be treating these new cases," Shizune said agreeably. She went to exit the room, but she paused by the door. "Will you be alright, Sakura?" she asked softly.

"There isn't really an option, is there?" Sakura asked bitterly. "I forgot to ask, but could you see to arranging an audience room? I'll need a way to speak to outsiders without risking contamination."

"I'll take care of it," Shizune promised. Her hand was on the doorframe, but she glanced back a final time. "Everyone will give it their best, Sakura. It'll work out. You'll see."

"Liar," Sakura whispered, too low for Shizune to hear.

-X-X-X-X-

"Iwa," Sakura said flatly.

"Yes, Haruno-sama," the masked ANBU replied, his voice inscrutable, face hidden by the porcelain owl mask that denoted the head of ANBU squad 4.

She sat on a scavenged chair in the entryway of the hospital, a barrier just visible between the wooden floors where she was and the genkan where he stood.

Sakura folded her hands very deliberately in her lap, because it wouldn't do to show weakness here. No tugging at her hair or chewing at the side of her thumb. There was no hint at the coiled panic building in her chest in her expression. There was enough of a crisis inside the hospital. The last thing she needed was panic outside, though she had chosen squad 4 for their unmatched discretion. Outside this hospital, only they knew the Hokage had been hospitalized. She'd already ordered rumors spread that made the situation within the hospital seem serious, but controlled. Information was the real power in war and she did not deceive herself by thinking this situation any less dire than it was.

"You sent a request for disclosure of any diseases with similar symptoms?"

"Yes. In the letter, I said that it had been brought by a civilian merchant who'd hired one of our shinobi to escort him. We'd safely quarantined the shinobi and the civilian had died, but we would like to know of any treatment options."

"Thank you, Fukurou-san. Please keep me informed."

"As you wish, Haruno-sama. Will that be all?"

Sakura dismissed the shinobi and retreated further into the hospital, slipping into a closet, pressing aside spare coats and kicking aside a discarded slipper. She muffled a sob with her hand, sliding down the wall. _Iwa-at the bare minimum, it's a two day journey. Then the time needed to make a request. Even if it's granted immediately, it will be at least a day while the information is being collected and it's approved for release. Then another two days on the return journey. Time for the medic-nin to read the report, then utilize any recommended treatment methods. At least five days. Does Sasuke have five days? What of Naruto? The other patients? _

"Stop," she hissed aloud to herself. "Stop it." She bit down hard on the side of her thumb, bringing her breathing under control with an iron will cultivated from years and years of denying herself. _If you can't go through, go around. If you can't go around, go over. If you can't go over, go beneath. And if all that fails, find a new destination. Putting aside a cure, what do we need most right now? _

"Time. Time is what we need." Thrusting open the door, she ignored the startled nurse, marching with a purpose that narrowed her vision down to the labs. What she needed was waiting there. She simply needed volunteers willing to sacrifice for the sake of their Kage.

-X-X-X-X-

She waited for three days. Days where she slept little, ate less, and watched helplessly as several more people who'd been in contact with Sasuke fell victim, especially his caretakers. No word was forthcoming from Iwa, but she could no longer afford to wait. Only a near constant purging of the fluid buildup in their lungs was keeping them alive and soon that would no longer suffice as the lung tissue hardened and became inflexible. Neither of them were conscious at this point, Naruto having suffered from a period of delirium beforehand.

In one of the secure labs below the hospital, she'd gathered her volunteers and Shizune.

"Are you certain this will work on living subjects?" one of the female researchers asked tentatively. "We've only ever used it for tissue cultures and preserving cell lines."

"They will be dead," Sakura told her. "We'll-or rather _I-_will use medical ninjutsu to stop their heart without damaging it. You will initiate the jutsu before oxygen deprivation can cause permanent damage to the brain. The bodies can then be preserved in perpetuity until we've developed a treatment program. But the amount of chakra this will take is considerable. Even working in ten man teams, you will be at fifty percent or less of capacity."

The massive expenditure of chakra was why most things were simply preserved in paraffin wax, if they needed to be stored for long-term research. The jutsu was one of many that was sound in theory, but in practice something more mundane served just as well. Sakura knew of it only because of her work in the Office of Strategic Surprise, where they worked with some poisons that could have a devastating effect on the body if introduced immediately, but broke down quickly, making them difficult to analyze. She also handled certain bacteria, parasites, and viruses, though only a fool would weaponize a virus, due to their high mutation rate.

Her lab was separate from the one beneath the hospital, located deep underground, but far from any of Konohagakure's wells and aquifers. Only twelve people in the whole of Konohagakure had clearance to enter the final and deepest lab and she and Shizune were among them. Sakura occupied a kind of supervisor role, as she was stretched so thin already with other responsibilities, but within that stark series of rooms, her word was law, accepted even above that of the Hokage. She had taken the unprecedented step of halting all other research and placing all her scientists and their considerable operating budget behind isolating and developing a treatment plan for this.

But they were having no more luck than the other labs. Scientific research was not magic. It took time, effort, and determination. It often worked by process of elimination, as they tested samples for antibodies to any of the diseases they kept on file. Discovering an infectious agent within a month was considered moving with breath-taking speed. But they did not have time even for that.

"Does everyone understand their role?"

A chorus of affirmative answers came from around the room.

Shizune moved to her side. "The families of the infected won't be pleased to hear that it is only the Hokage and Uchiha Sasuke you'll put into stasis."

"If they can muster ten individuals who can master the jutsu, they're welcome to it," Sakura said. "But I can't establish a precedent beyond the two of them. If this continues to spread, we'd potentially have to put hundreds into stasis. Think of it, Shizune. It wouldn't only be a logistics problem, it would be an immense security risk."

Shizune regarded her steadily for a moment, then rewarded her with a smile that only trembled a bit around the edges. "It seems just yesterday you were a child, Sakura. I'm sorry that this decision has to be yours. But you'll have my support."

Sakura tried to dredge up a smile for Shizune, but with her neatly ordered life in shambles about her, her teammates dying upstairs, and an emerging disease to control, Sakura do little more than soften her exhausted scowl. "I don't want to go up there, Shizune," she confessed.

"Who would?" Shizune said wryly. "But your control is unmatched. If anyone can bring a body to a halt without damaging it, it's you."

Sakura glanced down at her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers. "I never wanted to be helpless again," she mumbled.

"You're not," Shizune promised her.

Sakura wished she could believe that.

When she stood above Naruto, watching the labored rise and fall of his chest, she knew it was a lie. She was just as helpless, just as _useless _as ever. Sakura had thought her head and heart would be full of thoughts and memories, but there was only an unnerving numbness, as if though she understood intellectually what would happen here, the situation was too much to take in so easily.

"Haruno-sama?" someone asked tentatively.

_Damn you, Sasuke, _she thought with tired malice. _It would have been better if you'd died alone. _She channeled chakra into her hand, shifting its naturally destructive property to a noninvasive one, pressing her fingers gently beneath the thin fabric of Naruto's hospital clothing.

Her chakra eased through the barrier of his skin, flooding into his chakra pathways, curling about his heart and ever so gently halting the electrical signals that ordered it to beat. She stilled other organs as near simultaneously as she could manage, putting a temporary end to someone who just days ago had seemed larger than life, too vibrant to ever die, too great to cease existing until he'd changed their reality for the better. But now, all of that was at an end. With her own hand, Sakura was closing the chapter on the reign of the Rokudaime.

_In the end, it was Sasuke's fault after all. _

"Goodnight, Naruto," she whispered. "For now." _But one day it will be morning again. _

A/N: Apologies for anything I screwed up in the medical portions.


	4. For No One's Pleasure

A/N: Apologies for the lack of updates. I've been busy in real life and, as followers of _FKftD_ might know, I'm a compulsive re-writer. Because I don't plan out the plots at the beginning of a story and I don't work ahead-alas, not something I have the time to do-sometimes it becomes necessary to smooth out inconsistencies and strengthen the integrity of my worlds once I've got a better "feel" for them. Also, with more distance comes a more painful realization of any grammatical errors or any sections that fail to impress me as I reread my own work. So, other stories you might be waiting on that are in the process of being looked over before a new release: _Cry Out, Curlew, The Bone Eater, and Where the West Wind Blows_. Please look at it as an attempt to deliver to you the best story possible. 

Hokage By Necessity

-Chapter Four-

For No One's Pleasure

Through the skewed world revealed by raising her glass, Sakura contemplated things that were clearly _her fault. _Naruto being the way he was-in hindsight, that might have been at least partly her fault. He was fiscally inept, true, but Sakura had never left matters in his hands so long that someone suffered from it. Naruto would have learned from that kind of mistake. He was capable of learning and had lacked only the motivation.

Sakura had never tried to teach him, because that knowledge was _hers. _It was what gave her a place, a purpose within the fractured structure of Team Seven. She had a place elsewhere, where she was not simply acknowledged, but treated with respect, deference, and envy within the medical establishment, but the heart was a fickle beast. No matter how successful she was, how much praise she garnered, how many accolades and research grants were showered upon her, Sakura was left unsatisfied, for the people she really wanted to praise her never did. And living a double life as assistant to the Hokage and head of the Office of Strategic Surprise, both positions of heavy responsibility and weightier paperwork, had left her without time for a personal life and saw her in a state of perpetual exhaustion.

If she hadn't been Tsunade's disciple, it would have been impossible. She was the youngest head of the OSS to ever receive the appointment. Almost all of her subordinates were in their early thirties or late twenties and there had been some initial resentment of her position, especially once Shikamaru became less involved in aiding the Hokage and Sakura had to devote more of her time to keeping the village running smoothly. Sleep, friendships, anything resembling hobbies, all of them had been sacrificed, except for the few tenacious friends who were alright with friendship in abstentia, like Shikamaru, though their relationship was more a professional accord, and others like Shizune who made it their business to intrude on her life on occasion.

And there was Team Seven. And of all the ironic things in her life, the most ironic was that she was closest to Sai, who wasn't even regarded by the others as a proper member, but remained stubbornly and oft times awkwardly determined to overlook the actions they took to make him feel like an outsider. Their closeness was more literal than emotional-Sai lived next door to her, in another tiny apartment that was the twin of her own. While hers was empty, his looked like a storage facility for an art school.

Sai was odd, strange, rude, but she had a key to his door and an open invitation. Which was more than she had earned from Sasuke. She imagined that their fractured, dysfunctional relationship was her fault as well-she had once tried to kill him, even if she had faltered at the last moment, and even after his return, she'd never been able to trust him as wholeheartedly as she wished. He was a stranger, who'd created his own team and left them behind, then picked up his allegiance again as casually as changing his shirt. When she'd been a girl, Sakura had thought that kind of selfishness, that disregard for others, was cool. Even now, for someone whose life was dedicated to the needs of others, she admired that, even as she thought it was despicable. He was the eagerly awaited prodigal son and her silent resentment, building ever so slowly from the initial rush of relief and welcome, had mingled with lingering feelings that she'd never truly grown out of. How could she? Sasuke, whether it was gaining his attention or attempting to bring him home, had defined her childhood.

_Look at me, Sasuke, _she'd wanted to say. _You can't call me annoying any longer, can you? _She'd wanted to be able to say with truth, _I don't need you any longer. I no longer want you. _And if he had come to desire her, when she could say with truth she no longer desired him, so much for the better. But that was a fantasy. It had never happened and now, perhaps, it never would.

Frustration and rage and sorrow had been felt with such competing urgency she was left without knowing how to express them, so she had retreated to the Hokage's office and locked the doors and dismissed the ANBU. With the current power vacuum, she hadn't known if they would obey, but she could no longer sense them as she half-sprawled atop the great desk, paperwork relegated to neat stacks on the floor before she'd lost all momentum.

_Her fault that they'd been unable to cure the Hokage and Sasuke. Her fault that they still did not know what had caused the deaths of twenty-seven people. Her defeat, on the very field where she was supposed to have the advantage. They had called her a genius, a prodigy, a second coming of her mentor, but when it had _really _counted, she had failed. _

To Sakura, blind in her self-hatred, it did not matter that dozens of other people, each as qualified as she was, had also failed to isolate, cultivate, and treat their unknown pathogen. The failure was hers alone-each of them had done their best, but she expected something more than that from herself.

Her immediate and inflexible implementation of quarantine protocol had been unpopular, but it was what had stopped the spread of the virus into the population at large, allowing it to burn itself out in spectacular fashion within the hospital, taking twice as many of the medical staff as it had anyone else. She was glad, with a fierceness that burned through her, that she hadn't allowed it to escape and spread. And she was proud, prouder than she knew how to express, that not a single medic or nurse, even as their fellows lay dying, had flinched away from treating the patients they'd been assigned to.

That was what she told herself, because simply stopping it _wasn't _enough. Not for her. Not for anyone on the staff or the lab teams, who'd labored ceaselessly, looking for the agent. The labs had even cooperated, something remarkable in itself, but to no avail. No one knew what it was. Simply the symptoms. Simply that it had taken their brightly shining Hokage away. Not forever. His body wouldn't decay and she'd shut down his organs without damaging them, preserving him until a treatment could be discovered and tested. He could be woken, could be cured, could be reinstated.

But it would not happen today. And it would not happen tomorrow.

Sakura had thought she hated her clockwork life, that it was as empty and cold and sterile as her labs. And it had been all those things. But it had been comforting in its very predictability, appealing in its sameness. In a sudden fit of pique, she threw the half-full glass, watching with satisfaction as it shattered against the door, amber liquid seeping down the grain of the wood..

"Sakura," a slightly muffled voice scolded from outside.

It was Izumo. And, as always, Kotetsu was with him. They'd arrived sometime after she'd sealed the doors and had been as unobtrusive as possible until now. Sakura had been ignoring them, but now she allowed her back to meet the desk with a _thump, _legs hanging awkwardly off the side, light from the windows stinging her eyes.

When she could pretend she had privacy, Sakura had shoved away the thought of what must happen next. But now reality intruded among her self-pity and alcohol bottles. "Has Kakashi returned yet?" she asked.

"No," Kotetsu replied. "They think it'll be another day or two. The messenger was having trouble contacting him. The elders want to know when you can meet with them."

"Shizune reported to them already," Sakura grumbled sourly.

There was a marked hesitation in Izumo's voice when he spoke. "I don't think they'll ask you about Naruto's condition."

Sakura splayed her hands above her head, watching in half-drunk fascination the way the light parted around her fingers, turning the outer edges almost translucent. "Oh?"

"Now isn't the time to play dumb, Sakura," Kotetsu said. "You know that you're a candidate to replace Naruto. According to the elders, you're _the _candidate."

"Kakashi should be their choice," Sakura snapped. "He has seniority, reputation, and experience. Or if not him, then Nara Shikamaru. If his age is a problem, appoint Hyuuga Hiashi. There should be an entire list of candidates before they ever consider me."

Izumo's voice was low and reasonable, like he thought he was speaking to an enraged animal, which did nothing to soothe Sakura.

"Sakura, they don't want the Shichidaime to be another Rokudaime. Konoha is no longer at war-it doesn't need another frontlines shinobi at its helm. Naruto used you as his intermediary so often that they say so far as they were concerned, _you_ were the voice of the Hokage's office. They don't see a problem with making it official. And, while Kakashi-sempai is an immensely talented ninja, some of his personal habits make it objectionable that he should assume the office. The elders would prefer their meetings start on time, for example, rather than five hours later. You've seen what his paperwork looks like-" he rather suddenly fell silent and Sakura's brows dipped in consternation.

Then another voice, familiar and not at all welcome in her current state, made itself heard. "In short, we do not believe he would curb his personal eccentricities for the office. People do not change when they are given power. The characteristics they already possessed are simply emphasized, just as was the case with the Rokudaime." There was a short pause and Sakura warily rose. "Closing the door will not put an end to your problems," the voice informed her.

Hyuuga Daichi was the maternal grandfather of Hyuuga Hinata and head of the Elder Council after the passing of the Sandaime's advisors during the last years of Tsunade-shishou's term as Kage. Sakura was told that he was fond of her, but she had seen no evidence of it. Her hands trembled and she fisted them, blunt nails digging into her palms. The dulling haze of alcohol had been torn away the moment she recognized the autocratic tone.

"Mourning is something done in private," she answered tightly.

"Not in the Hokage's office."

The muscles in Sakura's jaw clenched. "With respect, I hardly had time for my obligations to the Office of Strategic Surprise while being the Hokage's assistant. At this point, I feel it is most important to prioritize my research, so I can return Naruto to _his _office as soon as possible."

She felt her seal waver and crack and Daichi strolled into the office, hands loosely behind his back. Without making eye contact, he walked past her to gaze out the window. Sakura realized she had subconsciously dropped into a battle stance and straightened.

"You _feel_, is it? Yes, I suppose that is true. You were close with the Kage. But that is not what you _think. _You are more intelligent than that, Sakura. Konohagakure no Sato is at her most vulnerable without a Hokage and your transition would be both quick and seamless."

"It would feel inappropriate," Sakura said, eyes focused on the great desk, chair empty behind it. "Besides, what would Naruto think?"

"Again. Your _feelings _have no place here. I am only interested in what your mind has to say, rather than your heart. And Naruto swore, when he took this office, that he would die for this village if it ever became necessary. He was to do whatever it took to protect this village. And, at this moment, what is in the best interest of Konoha is that the village _he _put before himself continues to be first in your priorities."

Sakura took a deep breath. She intended to give him a reasonable answer. It would have been cogent, intelligent, reasonable. But then there came the sound of shattering glass and Sakura realized she'd crossed the room to Daichi's side, smashing her palm against the wall with such strength that every pane of glass in the office had shattered. "He's my friend!" she shouted. "He-!" Her voice caught in her throat. "He hasn't even been in stasis for a whole day and you're considering who should replace him!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was a wild shriek.

Daichi turned to face her slowly. His pale eyes were eerie, judgmental. The eyes of the all-seeing Hyuuga, inhuman and, at this moment, distant from her suffering. "Kamizuki, Hagane, close the doors and reseal them. This time, not even sound escapes."

Izumo and Kotetsu obeyed with alacrity. Sakura's ears popped as the seal snapped into place, shimmering light coating a glass no longer there. "What are you doing?" she asked in a low voice.

"Protecting the reputation of my Hokage, when it's apparent she's about to break. Do you know what makes you a better diplomat than Naruto?"

"Yes," Sakura snarled. "Because Naruto's always honest, for better or for worse. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Because I think you're habitually dishonest with yourself," Daichi said bluntly. "You came here, rather than returning to your apartment. Your expression tells me you'd like nothing more than to break down and cry, but you've forgotten how."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?"

Sakura ground her teeth together. "I just don't have time to cry," she told him hoarsely. "And I'm sick to death of it. Crying means I've failed and my life is nothing but a string of failures!" This time it was her fist that sunk into the wall.

They regarded each other for a moment, Sakura with her eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights, her hair still pulled back tightly, now sticking up at odd angles from laying on the desk. Daichi was a Hyuuga-by definition, he was more put together than Sakura was at her best moments, his long hair gone iron grey, mature but still handsome. "You have been in the eyes of the Council for years now and I think any of us would agree that all your 'failures' are well in the past and best left there. What matters is the present-this village does not have time to pick the pieces up if you do not grieve now and break down completely in the future."

Sakura threw her hands up in frustration. "If I can't cry alone, can't cry in front of people who love me, what makes you think I'd cry in front of you?" Sakura demanded. "Leave me alone, Hyuuga! If you want me to grieve, then leave! You're rushing things. There were weeks between the death of the Third and the appointment of the Fourth. And that was when Orochimaru was still considered a threat!"

"We had more ninja then," Daichi replied calmly. "And there was no other choice, until Tsunade-sama could be located. It was a different situation. Have you considered that this was no accident?"

Sakura froze. "You're implying that this was something intentional? From Iwa? I know our relations with them were more strained after Onoki's successor became Tsuchikage, because Kitsuchi thought that Sasuke should have been at the very least imprisoned, but the reports-even if something underhanded like this does scream their _modus operandi_-don't indicate that they'd use a bio-weapon. After all, Sasuke was conducting a mission in their territory; if they'd assassinated him, we wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. And it was only Sasuke they had a problem with. Otherwise, the peace is benefitting trade, which means that the merchants are generating more missions, which translates into more money in the coffers. It's counter-intuitive to endanger that unless they have a larger objective."

Suddenly needing to move, Sakura paced in the limited space, whirling around to glare at Daichi. "Even if Iwa _did _do something like this, their bio-weapon programs are ten years behind mine," she told him flatly. "Konohagakure is in possession of the largest library of parasites, viruses, and bacteria on the continent and yet we can't get this thing to replicate on a single cell line so we can isolate it and compare it to them. With something as contagious and virulent as whatever this is, only idiots would try to manipulate it in anything less than a Level 4 lab and Iwa is lucky to be able to afford a single Level 3. It's probably something endemic in some little pocket of Iwa and Sasuke was just unlucky enough to be infected."

"But the possibility remains," Daichi told her. "And you are only taking the hidden village into consideration. And even then, you are applying Tsunade-sama's strict protocols to a place that is...backward in many ways."

Sakura stared at the older man unhappily. "I don't want to be Hokage," she told him. "I want to cure Naruto and Sasuke. I'll take care of an inquiry into the possibility this was an intentional attack, but find someone else. Besides, no matter what you tell me, there's something that won't change-I'm not suited to be Hokage. I don't have the charisma or the talent."

Daichi frowned at her. "Nara Shikamaru, in his function as jounin commander, told the council he was certain he could give you a majority and allow you to take the office."'

"If you spoke to Shikamaru, why didn't you offer the position to him? He's already jounin commander, so the majority vote is a given, and they're accustomed to taking his orders. You don't want another Rokudaime? Fine. Shikamaru's the most brilliant tactical mind of our generation and while he's not exactly a consummate politician, he's the head of an influential clan. He knows how to manage people and resources. Objectively, he's a better choice than Naruto. And an infinitely better choice than _me_," she stated flatly.

"That is only partially true," Daichi refuted. "Nara Shikamaru is indeed a uniquely talented individual. But he lacks drive and ambition and his natural instinct for tactics is reactive-he does not seek to thwart enemies before they become enemies, only to deny them once they've declared themselves his opponent. Have you ever seen him go out of his way to address a situation?"

Sakura scowled, because she was familiar with Shikamaru's character flaws, though being content with one's place in life wasn't exactly a _flaw_, per se.

"He prefers to support, not lead. And he was receptive to the idea of you being that leader."

"Dammit, Shikamaru," Sakura hissed between her teeth. "You should at least call a proper meeting of the jounin first," she said, switching tactics. If blank denial would not work, she could at least delay him with procedure.

"That's a courtesy, not a necessity," Daichi told her without even a moment's hesitation. "We only need them to approve our candidate, not suggest one themselves."

"If you do this," Sakura threatened, "there will those who suggest I'm being negligent in searching for the cause of all this."

"Then they are fools and you may feel free to ignore them. Becoming Hokage might limit your personal time in the laboratory, yes, but it leaves you with more freedom to pursue any line of inquiry. As Hokage, you could even request a meeting with the Tsuchikage to discuss this in person. As it is now, we are relying on Iwa's goodwill for a response. It is possible we could ask the Daimyo to exert political pressure on his counterpart, but that is a last resort. If we involve an outsider, we risk turning a simple question into an insult."

"'Did this deadly virus originate from your country?' is not a simple question," Sakura retorted, kneading her temples.

Daichi somehow managed to convey the impression of a shrug with nothing but his eyebrows.

"Can I have time to consider this?" she asked.

"Yes," Daichi said, his lips turning upward faintly. "But you must reach your decision before leaving this room."

A/N: Not clear on whether it should be Shichidaime or Nanadaime. Both are acceptable readings of seven in Japanese and I didn't know which would be appropriate in this case, so I went with Shichidaime, which better suited my purposes. Also, after FKftD, it feels bizarre to write a fic of this scope without Neji. Of course, if this was canon, I could resurrect him as needed or useful to the plot. I finally read the newest chapters. We'll leave it at that.


	5. By One Man's Measure

A/N: If you'd like, in your reviews you can suggest clans whose elders you'd like to see as members of the Elder Council. In this, I fear that OCs are pretty much unavoidable-as Naruto is a shounen manga about ninjas, people who'd meet the age requirements to be called Elders are somewhat sparse on the ground. I realize that Gaara's advisory council has some younger members, but I'd think that such a council would probably be composed of people that were too old for active service and whose memories stretched as far as possible into Konohagakure's history. Most of these would probably be from the generation of the Sannin, at this point. The other inevitable OCs will come up when we meet the members of Sakura's lab.

Also, thank you to everyone who pointed out the correct term for the seventh Hokage, but you'll see why I chose Shichidaime in this chapter. So, without further ado, another chapter. Though I promise I _am _working on a new release for First Flower.

Hokage By Necessity

-Chapter Five-

By One Man's Measure

It wasn't really a choice. It was an ultimatum and Sakura was keenly aware of how difficult her life could become if she entered a cold war with the Elder Council. Would they interfere in the recovery of the Hokage just to prove a point? Sakura wasn't willing to take the risk that the answer to that question would be yes.

So there was only one answer for Daichi. She glowered at the smug Hyuuga, who watched her with the enviable patience of a predator who knows that its prey must eventually surrender. "I will assume," Sakura rasped, "the office of the Hokage and all associated responsibilities," she conceded with ill grace.

"I am sorry," Daichi told her with a slight thawing in his manner, "that it had to come to this, Sakura. I won't pretend I'm not pleased that you will be our Hokage, but rest assured that the Council will do everything we can to support you in solving this."

Sakura nodded, but could not dredge up any of her much-vaunted political politeness at the moment. "When?" she asked.

"Your appointment? The daimyo has asked to meet with you this evening."

"You work quickly," she said, bitterness lacing the words.

"Not us. The daimyo has his own spies."

"So that speech about not involving outsiders?"

"It still holds true. The outbreak was contained and never made it into the civilian population. Unless you ask it of him, the daimyo will not interfere. He thinks very highly of you. He thought highly of your predecessor as well, though I don't think the regard was returned."

"The son exceeds his father," Sakura said dully. "Our new daimyo is far more decisive and politically adept than our last one. So politically adept, in fact, that Naruto liked to refer to him as 'that cold-hearted bastard.'"

The Hyuuga's lips quirked. "It would be hard to find a ruler more moldable than our esteemed late daimyo, true. But you are not adverse to meeting with Shimazu-dono?"

Sakura glanced at him, considering the question. "Since I've agreed to commit, it's in my best interest to act quickly and decisively. The sooner the Hokage matter is out of the way, the sooner I can continue my research." She strode across the room, then paused before the doors. Glancing back at the stoic Hyuuga, she asked, "You called me Shichidaime. Why not Nanadaime? That reading is a little...sinister, isn't it?" He might as well have called her the shadow of death.

Daichi paused. "There is no doubt you will hear it eventually. You are a fool if you did not expect your name to be at least mentioned as the next candidate, but it has been mentioned that you are riding into office on a wave of death. It was meant as an insult, to imply that your assuming the Kage-ship might bring ill-luck, but propaganda is a powerful weapon. By acknowledging it openly, you can turn that fear into something you can control. After all, we are shinobi. We can respect those who bring death."

Sakura frowned, uncertain whether she wanted to be remembered as the Hokage whose reign was defined by "shi"-death. The Yondaime, after all, hadn't been called the Shidaime, though his brief rule had seen one of the most horrific incidents in the history of their hidden village. But she had no intention of being Hokage for any longer than it took to cure Naruto, so she shrugged. "I'll meet with the daimyo. I trust you'll make arrangements for the public announcement?"

"It will be as you say, Shichidaime-sama," Daichi said smoothly.

Sakura flinched, but threw the doors open and stalked out, canceling the barrier in the process and nearly barreling into Izumo and Kotetsu.

Both grew serious at the expression on her face. "What's wrong?" Izumo asked.

Sakura took a deep breath and straightened, pulling together the emotional armor that had seen her through Tsunade's death, Sasuke's return, and now, she resolved, it would see her through this latest trial with as much dignity as possible. The fragile vulnerability of her childhood had no place in her life now and perhaps never would again.

Naruto had guided with warmth and charisma over a village that had passed through a war. She would lead with unfaltering strength in the face of uncertainty and if she lacked innate charisma, she had conviction that her approach to politics wasn't wrong.

"Nothing. Though the two of you might want to prepare-you're about to receive a promotion."

Izumo's brows rose. "Promotion?" Kotetsu repeated suspiciously.

"From aides to the aide of the Hokage to aides of the Hokage herself," Sakura said dryly.

Kotetsu's eyes widened. In contrast, Izumo's eyes narrowed and his gaze snapped toward the interior of the office where the Hyuuga still stood. The suspicion in his eyes was somewhat gratifying, but it wasn't what they needed at the moment. "I'll be meeting with the daimyo this evening to receive the appointment. You'll escort me," she said briskly.

Izumo nodded, his eyes never quite divorcing themselves from his observation of the elder. Kotetsu, however, grinned fiercely. "I'm glad, Sakura."

Her own smile was strained. "I'm glad someone is."

-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-

Shimazu-dono was an amalgamation of his parent's physical traits, combing his father's thinness with his mother's bold, exaggerated features, which left him quite handsome in a debauched, over-sexed way, with generous lips and sooty lashes that would have put a concubine to shame.

He was aware of the image and encouraged it, lounging comfortably on his side of the tatami room. But he was a wolf in silks, a predator who had watched with calculating eyes as his father's ministers had used his father's indecisiveness to their own advantage. Most of those same ministers had died or retired, but his reputation as an unashamed rakehell was intact. Sakura might have been able to see through the illusion on her own, but she was in a unique position, having been the highly trusted but disposable shinobi who'd guided those ministers into the afterlife. Medical jutsu was remarkable for being nearly impossible to discern from natural death.

Had they been actions of mere spite, Sakura would have trusted Shimazu-dono less, though she would still have been bound to follow him. But though killing them hadn't been the only method that would have seen them dealt with efficiently, none of them had been innocent of using the same tactics in their own time.

It had been a startling lesson for the Sakura of then, who'd still been under Tsunade-shishou's tutelage and still dared to dream of bright improbabilities. Shimazu-dono liked to chuckle and say he'd taken her political virginity, which was true enough. In a way, they'd grown up together, he and she, leaving them bound more closely on a personal level than was usual for Kage and Daimyo.

In contrast to his projection of ease, Sakura was all stiff, formal lines, her clothes standard jounin issue. Sakura did not regret the lesson she'd learned here, but she'd never forget the moment when she had realized that the spirit of fire she'd learned about in the Academy was also something capable of scorching and razing the soul. And, worst of all, all those missions had been blacked out, off the record books. Matters that she could not, under threat of execution, share with her teammates. Tsunade-shishou had known, but with her death, the only person who shared knowledge of the events that had transpired was Shimazu-dono.

"It's been a while, Sakura," Shimazu-dono drawled.

"Yes," she agreed, dropping her head in a brief gesture of respect. She made no effort to fill the silence that followed.

"I've heard you had some issues?" Shimazu-dono prompted.

"Some. But they're temporarily resolved."

A dark brow rose. "Is that so?"

"Yes."

Shimazu-dono made a thoughtful noise, a hum that arose from deep in his chest. "Well, it is your prerogative to deal with matters as you please, until it becomes a threat to my country. But I trust you'll work it out. You're of a more practical mindset that your predecessor. You will do what needs to be done, won't you, Sakura?"

Sakura frowned at her superior, but nodded curtly. "Of course."

"'Of course,'" he mocked. "Sakura, Sakura. You do realize that we can be forthright with each other now. You're the Hokage. The only one who can address the Daimyo as a social equal."

"Am I the Hokage?" she asked.

Shimazu-dono smiled. "Ever cautious. There's the Sakura I was looking for. Yes, you're the Hokage." He reached into his elaborate, impractical kimono, pulling out a sheaf of papers. Even from across the room, she could make of the distinctive red lines of the daimyo's seal. He gestured for her to approach and Sakura shuffled forward on her knees, hands held out to receive the papers.

She shuffled backwards almost as quickly to read over them in a heavy silence, finding nothing out of order. She had been duly appointed Hokage by the Daimyo, so it only remained to receive a majority vote from the jounin. "Did you even consider appointing someone else?" she asked without looking up from the document.

He chuckled. "Not for a moment. You see, I've met both Hatake Kakashi and Nara Shikamaru."

Sakura glanced up at him, which should have been enough encouragement for him to elaborate. But instead he only gave her a slow, close-lipped smile.

"Good luck, Sakura," he told her by way of dismissal.

-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-

Four a.m. dawned inevitably, her slug's eyestalks waving frantically in time to her alarm. Sakura, who was sitting on her bed with her knees tucked as tightly to her chest as she could manage, flicked off the alarm without glancing at it. Stiffly, as if she was an old, old woman, Sakura rose and tramped toward her shower, not even bothering to adjust the temperature, turning on the cold water full blast.

She winced as the ice-cold droplets stung her skin, but she _needed _this. It was emptying, cleansing. Sakura pushed away all the cares and concerns that had haunted her throughout the night, the priorities that needed to be met, the emotions that she'd suppressed. She let them seep from her pores, collect in the water that pooled in rivulets down the curves of her body, watched them eddy across the floor.

Sakura pressed her forehead against the chilled tile that lined the room, desperate in that moment for the whole horrifying experience to have been an ugly dream. She tried to make herself believe that she would walk onto the empty streets, do paperwork until the sun rose, and then Naruto would make his usual overdramatic entrance. Sasuke didn't appear often enough in her everyday life for him to fit reasonably into her escapist fantasy, but she pretended, just this once, that he'd make an appearance around noon so that the three of them could go to Ichiraku's for old time's sake. Sakura would even be willing to pretend that the smell of ramen didn't make her feel ill.

But reality was what it was. No amount of wishing could change that. But with effort, funding, and luck, she _could _restore things to how they had been. Her hands clenched. She _must. _

Turning off the water, Sakura briskly shook the water from her hair, then toweled it dry. She was still nude, only her pink hair twisted up into a makeshift turban, when she heard the distinctive _click _of her door being unlocked. She paused in the short hall that served as the hub of her small apartment.

A quick searching probe with her chakra reaffirmed her initial thought-Sai. "Not wearing clothes," she called out more casually than she would to anyone else of her acquaintance.

"It's not like you have anything appealing to see, hag," was the immediate reply.

Sakura chuckled against her will. The world could turn widdershins, but Sai would remain Sai. Though he'd now had years of exposure to normal human interaction, he was stubbornly resistant to reacting and interacting as a regular person. It made him frustrating, at times, but it also made him refreshing, because Sai never bothered to observe social norms or protocols outside of hierarchical relationships.

Sakura didn't think he actually found her physically unattractive, but insults had been the basis of their relationship from the start. And, now that she was no longer a teenager with teenage uncertainties about her body, she found them almost comforting, as strange as that thought was.

Sakura dressed carefully in the formal robes that had been issued to her for the occasion. If she was presented to the village as the Hokage today, it would be the only time she would wear these robes. They'd be carefully folded and stored in a cedar box at the state shrine, to be burnt at the ascendance of the next Hokage.

"You refrigerator is empty again," Sai remarked as he entered the room. His dark eyes flicked over her attire, but he refrained from comment.

"I know."

Sai settled on her bed to watch her as she tried to do something about her hair, but had to settle for brushing it into obedience, the line of her hair falling just above her collar. Beneath her robes went her usual boots, buffed until they shone. She searched her room with her eyes for the hat that accompanied the robe and found it in Sai's hands, the man's long, delicate fingers playing idly with the brim.

"So, after today I'll be addressing you as hag-sama," Sai said by way of conversation.

"Do that," Sakura said wryly, "and someone will discover your mummified body in the sands of Suna."

"You might want to get your violent streak under control before you take any oaths," Sai said, unperturbed by the threat.

"There might not be any oaths," she muttered.

Sai had once reminded her, superficially at least, of Sasuke, though when comparing them side by side their differences became apparent. Sasuke's eyes always managed to be sharp, cutting. Sai's eyes were just as dark, but they seemed to absorb rather than evaluate. He shrugged when he noticed that she was watching him in the mirror. "You're the last member of Team Seven," he said. "Your mentor was both Godaime and one of the Sannin. Most of the shinobi in this village owe their lives as much to you as to Naruto. You head the Office of Strategic Surprise and you're an unparalleled medic-nin. Your record is exemplary and you've been doing Naruto's paperwork since he assumed the office." He blinked. "Why shouldn't you be Hokage?"

Sakura spared him a brief smile, wishing that she felt so certain. She'd resolved to be strong, but here she was, faltering. Again. Would there ever come a time in her life when she didn't need someone to hold her hand, as it were?

The jounin had been ordered to assemble by six, so when her clock read that it was five, she and Sai left for the meeting point. One of the training grounds had been roped off for the purpose and chunin guards had been on watch all night, prepared to erect a barrier jutsu the moment the meeting was called to order. The grass, damp with dew, brushed at her exposed toes, and Sakura tried to draw in the early morning hush of the forest.

Murmured greetings were exchanged as they crossed the boundary line, but Sakura could barely make out the faces of the chunin in the faint light that managed to filter through the canopy.

The scent of cigarette smoke was the first warning that they were not the first to arrive; soon she could make out the distinctive silhouette of the jounin commander that she'd so recently tried to shove this burden on to.

After a long, slow exhale, Shikamaru said, "G'morning."

"Morning," Sakura returned briskly, then swiftly turned to a more important topic than a greeting. "Why are you supporting this, Shikamaru?" she asked, seeing no point in doing anything less than confronting him directly. "Why are they rushing this?"

The flickering red glow of his cigarette was the brightest light in the clearing. "Can't smoke around Ai, so I have to do this when I have a chance," he explained. "As to why the Elders are in such a hurry, that's pretty easy. When it became obvious that Naruto wasn't going to make it, factions started forming. By the time you'd put him in stasis, most people'd made up their minds one way or another. Most of the time, succession isn't a problem. You've either got a successor hand-picked by the previous Hokage or you have an outstanding-and obvious-candidate to fit the bill. But between you and Kakashi, there were early signs that it was going to turn into a nasty faction war. And if it comes to the point where we can't get either of you a clear majority, that'll be a major pain, so we're doing this before Kakashi can return and rally his own troops."

Sakura's brows furrowed. "If Kakashi has that much support, then why...?"

"You?" Another drag on the cigarette, then he flicked it away, grinding it beneath his heel. "Because Kakashi lives in the past."

"I'm hardly going to just forget about Naruto and Sasuke!" Sakura hissed vehemently. "I _will_ discover a cure. This is only a temporary measure."

Shikamaru made a noise Sakura couldn't interpret. "Just get it into your head that I'm on your side," he said. "Because not all the people you call friends will be."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked, a wave of trepidation pricking the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

Shikamaru sighed. "Look at it like this, Sakura. Everyone who isn't blind knows there's some tension going on between you, Naruto, and Sasuke. Both of whom are suddenly stricken by a disease that no one has ever heard of. It kills half the people who come into contact with it, but you never even come down with a cough. And your little stasis gambit is confidential for security reasons, so most people think that the Hokage is dead. You operate the premier bio-weapon laboratory on the continent. And now, here you are, poised to take the position that Naruto occupied and Sasuke publically declared he wanted. Given those facts, what would _you _think?"

Sakura's trepidation solidified into a feeling of horror, because she could see the logic there, could pick out the obvious conclusion. "No one would believe that..." she protested weakly.

Shikamaru shrugged. "When people are afraid, they'll believe a lot of things," he pronounced bluntly.


End file.
